Here Comes Everybody

There are two basic answers to that question: either I owe you a favor, or I want you to owe me one. And if either of those things are true of enough individuals, a whole group can enter a state called “reciprocal altruism.”

Wikis take on one of the most basic questions of political philosophy: Who will guard the guardians? Their answer is, everyone. The basic bargain of a wiki means that people who care that the site not be used for that sort of prank have the edge, because it takes far longer to write a fake entry than to fix it.

Even when the judicious use of social connections increases the proportion of good ideas, most ideas are still bad. It’s not enough to find some way to increase the successful ideas. Some way needs to be found to tolerate the failures too.

It is easier to understand that you face competition than obsolescence.

Two of the most critical questions are “Does the group need to be small or large?” and “Does it need to be short-lived or long-lived?” Two either/or questions mean four possible combinations; a flash mob is a small short-lived group, while the people contributing to Linux comprise a large and long-lived one, and so on.

Professional self-conception and self-defense, so valuable in ordinary times, become a disadvantage in revolutionary ones, because professionals are always concerned with threats to the profession.

The linking of symmetrical participation and amateur production makes this period of change remarkable. Symmetrical participation means that once people have the capacity to receive information, they have the capability to send it as well.

The larger the number of users required, the harder the group is to get going, because the potential users will (rightly) be more skeptical that enough users will join to make it worth their while.

When sociologists talk about social capital, they often make a distinction between bonding capital and bridging capital. Bonding capital is an increase in the depth of connections and trust within a relatively homogenous group; bridging capital is an increase in connections among relatively heterogeneous groups.